


Catch

by Nenalata



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Body Image, F/M, FRIENDS FRIENDS FRIENDS ALL AROUND, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, I guess it doesn't matter but still, I promise, Listen it happens with these two, Male-Female Friendship, Pining, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Self-Hatred, and sex, but not among all the friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 01:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23903485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: “Dorothea,” he began, and the somber, solemn gentleness in his words squeezed something lonely in her chest, “you’re a real catch, okay? No one’ll ever deserve you. But…you deserve it all. You know that, right?”Maybe not. But Dorothea catches feelings for one of her best friends anyway.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Dorothea Arnault/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 22
Kudos: 121





	Catch

**Author's Note:**

> play with me on twitter at [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites) to hear me blab about fire emblem and napping

“Oh? Is _that_ what you like?”

“Syl, if you don’t shut up and get back to it, I swear—”

“I’d _never_ dare to inconvenience the beautiful rose Dorothea Arn—”

“Those ‘magic fingers’ of yours are inconveniencing me quite a bit, actually, given how little they’re…well. _Magicking_.”

Sylvain chucked the spellbook at her, and Dorothea batted it out of the air before it could even threaten her face. 

“You’re never going to pass the exam like that,” she reminded him. Ignoring Sylvain’s despairing groan, Dorothea picked up the abused textbook, made a great show of dusting off its spine, and handed it back to him. Sylvain pushed it away, electing to toss his arms over his face and swooning onto her bedroom floor instead.

“I’m going to die, Dorothea.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am. I’m going to die right now, here, on your floor.”

“Please don’t. I’m in no mood to dispose of a corpse.”

“The Gautier line will end here!” Sylvain cried out, deaf to her long-suffering sigh. “How shameful, how tragic an end! Not one of those comely women whose hearts I have so cruelly broken—”

“Sylvain, get _over_ yourse—”

“—will finish me off—in _several_ delightful ways—thus ensuring the Crest of Gautier lives on—”

“Sylvain!” Dorothea picked up the discarded textbook for a second time, bopping his chest maybe a little too hard. Sylvain wheezed an affronted laugh and sat up.

“What, are you offering to pick up their slack?”

She knew her glare was not as effective with a repressed laugh of her own twitching on her lips. “Maybe I’ll finish you off with a lightning bolt in your face.”

Sylvain winced. “Ouch. Point taken. Can I have my book back, please?”

Sylvain had no one to blame but himself. This was a statement that applied to him far too often, but in this case, it applied to him actually _doing_ his schoolwork for once.

“Why would you of all people register for a mage certification exam?” Dorothea had asked him when he’d knocked on her door tonight with all the sheepish, unapologetic grace of a spoiled, beloved cat.

“I just kinda wanna see the look on the Professor’s face when I show up and then _pass_ ,” Sylvain had confessed. “So I haven’t gone to any of her black magic sessions at all. But learning magic on your own’s kind of…harder than I thought.”

Dorothea didn’t really get it, but she confessed it felt…good to know her most brilliant of idiot friends’ first instinct had been to turn to her. Not to Annette, the bouncy little overachiever in his own house. Not to Lysithea, the snappish, overcompensating genius in the Golden Deer. Both of them had more discipline than Dorothea, but Sylvain had seemed almost offended when she’d asked why he hadn’t asked any of them.

“Because you’re my friend,” he’d explained, which wasn’t much of an explanation at all.

But whatever, really. They _were_ friends. If Dorothea wanted to admit it—which she didn’t, maybe—she counted Sylvain among her comfortably-small number of people she’d call her ‘best’ friends. And that group was eclectic enough: Linhardt, with his lackadaisical attitude towards everything and anything to the point she’d wonder if _he_ considered them friends save for how often he invited her to skip lectures with him; Petra, with her quiet laugh and intense focus and delight in showing Dorothea what other Brigid tattoos meant by tracing them on her skin with lipstick; Ingrid, with her wide-eyed, head-high sense of justice and fierce protectiveness and the very first person to prove to Dorothea horses really didn’t have such big hooves or teeth as she’d feared.

And Sylvain…

“Ugh. Shit. Can I take off my belt?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dorothea said absent-mindedly, squinting at Sylvain’s careful calculations. It was pretty organized, actually. Solid logic, maybe even more efficient than she would have reached for. But still, if he tightened up the pattern a bit…

A rustle, a clunk, and a relieved sigh informed her Sylvain had freed himself from his belt. He crawled into her sight again, leaning over her shoulder to look over his black magic formula, too.

“You shouldn’t wear it so tight,” Dorothea chided him. Sylvain rolled his eyes, and his scoff ruffled the edges of her hair.

“Makes my hips look slimmer. Doesn’t it?”

Dorothea did not dignify his compliment-fishing with a response.

Sylvain nudged her shoulder. “Come on. Doesn’t it?”

“Channel it from the base of your spine and past your shoulder before casting.” Dorothea tapped the parchment. “It’s a waste to have electricity stop at each vertebra along the way, don’t you think?”

“Dor.” Sylvain patted her shoulder again. “Dor, doesn’t it? Don’t my hips look slimmer like that?”

She tried to ignore him. But it was growing much more difficult with each pat, because if his own growing smile was any indication, Dorothea was finally failing to hide her amusement.

“Dor—”

“Some other girl can feed you pretty lies,” she sniffed. Sylvain didn’t fall for the bait. He fell on _her_ instead, pressing her down onto her rug.

“Wait, I got it! You think I look better without a belt at _all_ , right?”

Dorothea finally lost her composure, laughing against his lips when he carefully captured them in his own. His smile tasted like bergamot and cedar.

Sylvain kissed her once, twice, three four five six times, progressively faster and sloppier, before he let her laugh freely. He was still grinning when he rolled off her and extended his hand to help her sit up.

“I’m done. I promise.”

Dorothea’s laugh broke off into an undignified, condescending cough. “And we all know how reliable your promises are.”

The moment the jibe left her mouth, worry panged in her chest. But Sylvain waved off what, from anyone else, might have seemed intentionally vindictive. No, he laughed, because Sylvain always laughed at her taunts. He’d told her once he found them ‘refreshing,’ that no one said them, meant them, _and_ didn’t care all at once.

“Well, I _do_ promise I’m gonna show the Professor up at the exam next month. So…if I change the formula here, like you said, you think it’ll work?”

Dorothea nodded and was about to give him some final nitpicks when the bells chimed. She waited out each chime—one, two, three four five six—and by the time bell number six rang out, she’d remembered an extremely unpleasant fact.

“Okay, Syl. Kicking you out now.”

Sylvain raised a brow. “Whoa, no need to sound so cheerful about it.” She didn’t reply, only began hunting about for the brassiere she’d thrown off for comfort’s sake and comfort’s sake alone. “What’s wrong?”

She found it, turned around, and began fiddling with it under her blouse. “I have a date,” she said, as if that provided an answer.

It had, apparently. “Just don’t go,” Sylvain said right away. “What? Don’t look at me like that. You don’t _want_ to.”

Dorothea, now presentable for outside-her-room-and-away-from-Sylvain context, frowned at him. “You know better than I do how what I _want_ so rarely matters. Syl, he’s a baron’s son.”

“Ooh, a _baron_ ’s son.”

Dorothea swallowed unshed tears. The disdain in Sylvain’s voice wasn’t aimed at her, she knew, but it hurt all the same. “It’s not like I have many options. And he’s not bad to look at. So I could do worse.”

“Thea…” Sylvain stepped forward, and Dorothea let him take her hands in one of his own. “You could do so much _better_ , too.”

She raised a brow. “Oh? Like you?”

Sylvain flushed, and sure enough, he dropped his hands to shove them in his pockets, like he had to hide them. “You know what I mean. Just…live a little, you know? You’re only young once.”

He didn’t get it.

People like him never got it.

“Believe me, I know,” Dorothea said, not bothering to mask her bitterness. “So it’s better to find security sooner rather than later.”

The last echoes of the bells had long since died. It made their lingering silence ring far too sympathetically for Dorothea’s comfort.

She was ready to insist he leave—again—when Sylvain spoke up once more. “Dorothea,” he began, and the somber, solemn gentleness in his words squeezed something lonely in her chest, “you’re a real catch, okay? No one’ll ever deserve you. But…you deserve it all. You know that, right?”

And Dorothea, unprepared for the painful squeezing in her heart, knew of nothing else to do but laugh. “That’s the worst line you’ve ever tried on me,” she choked out. “Run along, Sylvain.”

He laughed too, running his fingers through his hair. Red curls framed his face like dozens of crescent moons fit for an equal number of universes. “Worth a shot, right? Maybe I had bad delivery?”

This time, when she shoved his spellbook at his chest, he took it. In her doorway, he offered her a stupid little salute to make her laugh, autumn’s evening chill breezing past him into her room. “Have fun on your date tonight.”

She only wrinkled her nose. He was still laughing when she slammed the door shut.

* * *

“ _No_.”

“Right?” Dorothea threw herself on Sylvain’s bed and groaned into his pillow. Sylvain, for his part, sat at his desk, a safe distance away. _Thank everything good and pure in the world_. “I broke up with him then and there—just—stop laughing! It was awful!”

“Shit! I, I, I just—” Sylvain dissolved into howls of laughter again. Dorothea glared at him from above his pillow. When his wheezes calmed into ugly coughs, his words squeaked through like he was a scandalized thirteen-year-old. He certainly was behaving like one— “His face was _between your thighs_.”

“Honestly, I should have done it sooner.”

“If the fabled Dorothea Arnault’s best flower was right in front of my mouth—”

“I will set your sheets aflame.”

“—and she said, ‘actually, let’s end things now,’ I think I’d…I think I’d die. Instantly. I would _die_ —”

“You will if you keep laughing!”

“It’s just…” Sylvain shook his head, as if he needed to clear his head of a shameful memory he didn’t even have. Dorothea wished it could be so easy for her. “You have to listen to a girl’s needs, especially when you’re making love!”

“Please don’t call what he was doing _making love_.”

“Ugh, sorry, yeah.” Sylvain tossed his inkwell up and down while he talked. Dorothea hoped it was empty and that he just wasn’t insanely talented and graceful in everything. “You literally told him you didn’t want his tongue inside. Like, what did you say, ‘tongue out, fingers in?’ Pretty obvious, if you ask me. Shit, you remind _me_ sometimes in those _exact_ words—”

Dorothea sighed and rolled over to stare at Sylvain’s ceiling. It was much higher than her first-floor room. She wondered how much such a beautiful, sunny room had cost his family, then decided she didn’t really want to know. “I had to be much more polite with him,” she corrected Sylvain.

She could hear the smirk in his voice when he said, “Aw, so you’re only rude to _me_? Am I that special?”

“Not at all,” Dorothea snarled at the ceiling. Sylvain’s laugh came quieter but no less pleased. “You just have thicker skin.”

“And a thicker cock.”

“And a—Sylvain, stop!” He was laughing again. She wanted to kill him, but only a little. “You’re just…easy to be around, that’s all. And these boys, these…men…their insistence on _nobility_ and _propriety_ but still won’t _listen_ —”

“Hey.”

The bed dipped next to her, and Sylvain settled by her side. Calloused thumbs brushed tears from the corners of her eyes, tears she hadn’t even realized had stung her skin. “Ugh.” She sniffed and tried to wipe her cheeks clear as an excuse to bump his hands away. “Stupid. _He_ should be the one crying right now. Not me, wasting my energy on him.”

Sylvain’s rejected hands switched tactics, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. Dorothea closed her eyes—to hide them, to let her painted eyelids cover her too-red whites—and tried not to let herself feel soothed.

“It is stupid,” Sylvain said. Dorothea prepared an arsenal of witty ripostes to any of his inappropriate jokes she could foresee: something about winding up in Sylvain’s bed, or getting his pillows wet, or more talk of her _best flowers_. But when he said, “Ticks me off you came running to my room to complain about another man, not just to hang out with _me_ ,” Dorothea didn’t know if she should tease him or cry more.

“I never want to have sex ever again,” she wailed, settling for both. “So shut _up_.”

Sylvain did. “Want me to steal you some cake or something?” he asked after twenty minutes of hair-stroking and tear-drying had passed.

“Kitchens are closed,” Dorothea forced the words out, suddenly beyond exhausted.

Not so sleepy, though, that she couldn’t see the exaggerated wink Sylvain threw at her. “Scullery maid owes me a _favor_ ,” he said, dragging out the vowels.

“Repulsive.”

“You want cakes or not?”

Why was her heart racing so fast?

He’d done things like this before.

 _She’d_ done things like this before.

Light-hearted, non-serious, small displays of friendship.

Why was her heart racing?

 _You’re a real catch, Dorothea_.

“Go get me cakes,” Dorothea mumbled into his pillow. Sylvain ruffled her hair out of the primness he’d smoothed it into. Her complaints were greeted with the gentle click of his bedroom door. By the time Sylvain arrived with enough cakes for the two of them, Dorothea had fallen asleep on his clean sheets.

They smelled like bergamot and cedar, too.

* * *

“—and then he had the _audacity_ to show up to classes _halfway through the day_ afterwards! Even sat next to one of his _exes_!”

“Sleazebag,” Dorothea agreed, and she meant it. Judging by Ingrid’s eyeroll, doubtlessly visible from Enbarr, Ingrid didn’t think she’d been serious.

“You’re too soft on him. With Sylvain, you have to treat every single one of his screw-ups like the one before. One heartbreak’s as bad as the other, just in new, creative, utterly-Sylvain ways!”

This, Dorothea believed, was not true, or else Ingrid wouldn’t need to keep lecturing him and Sylvain wouldn’t keep breaking hearts. But, knowing her beloved Ingrid, if she shared this thought, Ingrid would harp on about how many years she’d known him and how many of his messes she’d cleaned up. Ingrid was put out enough; all she needed right now was a willing ear.

Besides. Sylvain _had_ screwed this one up.

“Well, this time certainly was creative; I’ll give you that.” Dorothea filed her nail a little too hard and healed the quick before Ingrid could hear her pained hiss. “But why do you even know he was busy breaking up with someone during training? Did he tell you or something?”

Dorothea was usually the only one privy to the details of those horror stories, and the thought of his oldest friend knowing before her…

Stung?

Ingrid’s face whitened as she tightened her lips in a painful-looking frown. “No! The poor thing ran to me in tears after! Me! Because everyone is so used to _me_ cleaning up after him! He always goes on and on about all the…the havoc his brother’s disowning caused him, but what about me? What about—”

Dorothea let Ingrid go on and on about the havoc Sylvain was causing her. She chimed in with disdainful hums and shocked gasps as necessary. Sylvain really could be a piece of trash sometimes, and she hated how much she sympathized.

She hated when he was a piece of trash to _her_ , even. She wondered how much he hated her for it, too.

Finally, Ingrid ran out of steam, at least for this round of venting. She buried her face in Dorothea’s lap and screamed one final frustrated groan. Dorothea patted her head.

“I don’t know how you can put up with him so calmly,” Ingrid said, voice muffled by Dorothea’s nightgown. “Sometimes I just…think about you _touching_ each other knowing _full well_ what he’s capable of—”

“You think about him touching me, do you?” Dorothea couldn’t help it. “I can absolutely tell you what he’s capable of, but if you’re more interested in _me_ —”

Ingrid bolted out of Dorothea’s affectionate cuddle fast enough to almost knock her chin against Dorothea’s jaw. “You! You are just like him!” Dorothea beamed at the accusing finger jabbed in her face. Ingrid’s furious glare wavered, and she collapsed into an annoyed puddle on Dorothea’s bed again.

“Maybe that’s why I put up with him,” Dorothea said lightly. “Makes it easier to deal with being me, too.”

Ingrid poked Dorothea’s thigh with her stockinged foot. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

Dorothea gave her another apologetic pat, on her leg this time. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean it.”

She did.

“I love you both. Very much,” Ingrid said, sitting up. She wrapped her arms around her bent knees and rested her head on top. Her green-eyed stare pierced Dorothea’s closed-off heart. “And it’s why it scares me so much how you two just…keep getting together the way you do.”

Dorothea’s already-stiff smile faded.

“No, _please_ don’t look at me like that.”

“Ingrid,” Dorothea said gently, chidingly, maybe too condescendingly, but Ingrid cut her off.

“You’re too good to be treated like that.” To Dorothea’s shock, some horrible, wavering teary tone cracked in the undercurrents of Ingrid’s voice. “I just couldn’t stand it knowing two of my very best friends had…that Sylvain had done this to _you_ , too. You deserve so much better.”

 _A real catch. Dorothea, you’re a real catch. You know that, right_?

“Oh, absolutely,” Dorothea laughed. “How wonderful I have you to remind me! I think I could fall in love with you so easily, you know.”

Ingrid let her change the subject to a Golden Deer student who Dorothea claimed had been making eyes at her _pretty blond braid swinging above your waist_ , and if she kept fixing her eyes at Dorothea’s face with a worried little pout, Dorothea let her, too, and said nothing at all about it.

* * *

Maybe they were a little drunk the first time it had happened. What did it matter? They were flirtatious people by nature, as lonely as each other in completely different ways. What did it matter, then, that their flirtations were all too similar, that they liked each other as friends just enough for their soft smirks and lingering touches to mean so little when they’d drunk so much?

It was fine. They both understood it meant nothing. The next afternoon, they were back to laughing too hard at too-cruel jests and feigning revulsion no one, not even them, could believe anymore.

Maybe they’d been a little drunk the first time. Maybe Sylvain had said he loved her when he came, maybe he’d held her closer than their bodies could manage as he whispered words of praise against her sweat-damp neck.

Maybe they were still friends, nothing more, nothing less, when morning dawned chilly and grey in his room and she put on her clothes and left, because they’d been drunk, nothing more, nothing less, even though maybe the night before, _maybe_ Dorothea had cried when he’d said it and had come against his tear-stained chest harder than she ever had in her life.

Maybe they’d been drunk, but not so drunk that they weren’t still friends. Maybe they weren’t so drunk they could forget it, either.

* * *

Ingrid was right and wrong.

Sylvain and Dorothea _were_ alike. Maybe she _should_ be worried.

But Dorothea…

Dorothea was right, too.

Being with Sylvain made it easier to deal with being Dorothea.

But Ingrid was wrong, because she shouldn’t be worried at all.

When Dorothea ‘got together’ with Sylvain—in any, any way—she couldn’t hate herself at all. She enjoyed spending time with him too much, and if that made her narcissistic, she couldn’t be bothered to care. It was better than the daily alternative.

And what was there to hate, anyway? Sylvain was excellent in bed, attentive in a way no one, no man nor woman nor individual had ever tried to be. It was fun to learn the stories _behind_ that attentiveness, to learn how to replicate it for him or for someone else, and it was just as much fun to be on the receiving end of those attentions.

Sylvain could lift her with one arm if she latched onto his forearm enough—at least, she could if he’d kept up with his training—and if he ever dropped her, he’d spout apologies through his chuckles that she could swat away with a smile. He’d carried her on his back to Manuela’s infirmary tent when she’d twisted her ankle during the mock battle even though his house had absolutely decimated hers, and he’d insisted on carrying her to her own room all the way back from outside the town—and then left without another touch save a head pat for assurance that he’d send dinner over with Ingrid.

Sylvain could laugh off every single one of her jokes and mocking comments even when she meant them a little too much and sharpened the words more than she wanted to reveal. He didn’t pry when she sidestepped personal conversation topics. He listened when she shared them. He talked about his life sometimes, things she knew he hadn’t told his childhood friends even if he wouldn’t admit it. Things as simple as asking her not to tell anyone he always an easy time with the Officers Academy coursework, that he didn’t mind helping her with assignments even for her own, different house—but maybe, sometimes she wondered, maybe she would benefit more from following his same assignments, of sharing a desk, of...

Sylvain trusted her, Dorothea knew, and she trusted him more than she trusted herself. She’d tell him more of her secrets if she wasn’t so terrified to share more than he would ever be willing to give.

They were friends. Sylvain was her best friend. What was there to hate about him?

 _You’re a catch_. _You deserve it all._

“Go ahead,” Dorothea purred. “Show me how _good_ you can be.”

Felix retched behind her, not unlike a cat spitting up a hairball. Sylvain, however, wiggled his sparking fingers at her.

“Oh, _Thea_. You know better than anyone how _magic_ my fingers are.”

Dorothea zapped the distant training dummy, and it burst into flames hotter than her cheeks. “Well, your Professor certainly doesn’t.”

Now Sylvain retched, too, but somehow, it sounded more elegant than Felix’s even if it was louder and garglier.

That was a normal thought, right? Felix was a child, despite being only a little younger than her. Immature, easily scandalized. Of course Sylvain would sound more alluring, attractive, sensual with saliva bubbling in the back of his throat than a scrawny seventeen-year-old—

“Goddess, _please_ don’t.” Now Sylvain’s distant training dummy exploded with lightning a little too powerful to be safe for the training grounds. “I don’t need to imagine that.”

“Neither do I,” Felix mumbled, tossing a tiny fireball at his much-closer training dummy. A few sticks of straw flickered and burnt to a crisp, and he swore under his breath. Dorothea and Sylvain ignored him.

“You should imagine it,” Dorothea said. She pretended to inspect her perfect manicure and let a single spark crackle above her pointer finger. Sylvain glared at it. “Because in a few scant weeks, you’re going to have to imagine how to explain to her you’d been too proud and too lazy to learn how to cast a single spell listed on your exam.”

“Oh, shut up,” Sylvain complained. He zapped another training dummy, but this time, he missed, singeing half of its straw-stuffed head. “Maybe I should just tell her I was too busy imagining her _magic fingers_ doing unspeakable things to m—”

Dorothea shoved the mental image out of her brain faster than she’d ever shoved a gross, desperate date out of her life. “ _You_ shut it. You’re so strange about her, you know? What even _is_ your deal?”

Did Sylvain want to try his charms on his Professor for real, odd as his aggressive measures seemed? He and his Professor were almost the same age, after all. Maybe he wanted someone more mature, too. Maybe someone less expressive, less dramatic than his breadcrumb trail of broken hearts, less expressive and dramatic as Do—

Sylvain blasted his training dummy with fire, and its roaring flames licked the flammable canvas of Dorothea’s nearby.

“You’re supposed to practice lightning!” Dorothea shouted at him over the fire as Sylvain, Felix, Hanneman, and her rushed to douse them.

“My fire spells are better!”

“It doesn’t mean lightning won’t be on the _exam_ —”

“Will you two lovebirds quit bickering and get to it?” Hanneman snapped.

“We’re just kidding,” Dorothea and Sylvain said in unison.

Sylvain wiped ashes from her cheek when the last smoking remains of the mannequins had been swept away by disgruntled servants, and Dorothea realized with horror, terror, and mortification that she had lied to their professor.

She hadn’t been kidding at all.

* * *

He was just one of her best friends, that was all.

Dorothea liked touching him the way she liked touching all her friends. Innocent things, not even the less-innocent ways, such as how Sylvain could hook his arms around her knees and throw her on his bed like she weighed nothing at all.

No, she liked just sitting next to him at dinner, grabbing the back of his head, and forcing him to nod when Flayn asked him if he liked her cooking that day, even if Seteth was creeping around the dining hall like one of her Enbarr opera patron’s pet jungle cat protecting its own dinner.

She liked the same thing with Ingrid’s hair, braiding it while Ingrid complained about the latest letter from her father that she had no idea how to reply to. Ingrid had beautiful, silky hair Dorothea wished she’d do more with, but at least Ingrid let her play with it when safe in their rooms, even though she was never comfortable leaving without untangling all the curls and ribbons from the coiffure.

It wasn’t just the way Sylvain could kiss her, stroking her tongue with his so gently and sweetly it would have made her tear up had she not seen him entwine that same talented tongue with a different Black Eagles girl Dorothea didn’t even know.

No, she just liked rubbing his back in silence while he buried his face in his hands after he came back from Castle Gautier with a glowing lance he wished he didn’t want and hated how much he loved using it, piecing together bits of his family history just by the way she could hear his silent guilty jealousy about how she hardly knew her own.

She liked the same thing with Petra, when she’d massage that tattooed skin after draining battles and exercises and bandit raids and Petra would ask if she could show her the different markings her father and grandfather had, tracing sticky red lines on Dorothea’s skin with borrowed lipstick she’d never wound up returning.

It wasn’t just the way Sylvain moaned, loud and shameless, when Dorothea inhaled quick and sharp and buried her face into the hair around his cock, let him fuck her throat in shallow little thrusts and tug her away when he worried she’d run out of air if her fingers squeezed too hard into his hipbones and ass.

No, she just liked sitting with him, back to back, while he read the novels he’d never admit he liked and she tried out new makeup palettes in a hand mirror and didn’t ask him for his opinion on any of them, because he’d either say she was beautiful no matter what, or he’d give her honest feedback, and she knew she couldn’t handle whichever he chose to tell her.

She liked the same thing with Linhardt, when they’d find a perfect, huge, shady tree to sit under together, shoulder to shoulder while Lin napped and sometimes let her rest her head on his bicep and never even made fun of her for looking like a graceless fool with him.

No difference. Just like all her best friends.

Dorothea just…

She just wanted to touch him _all the time_. Everywhere, always, harmless and innocent, searing and delicious, hands and fingers and kisses and tongues, everywhere and always.

But wasn’t that kind of thing normal between the two of their flirtatious selves, anyway?

* * *

“You should totally meet my girlfriend.”

Dorothea’s hand froze on her newest sheet music. The notes swam in her vision. The tune swam away from her brain. She forced herself to turn the page that might as well have been blank. “Oh? And why is that?”

Sylvain quirked a brow. Why was she able to see that, be aware of that, when tomorrow’s choir recital had vanished into another universe on the parchment? “Uh, I don’t know, because you always do? Anyway, I think you’d like her.” Dorothea didn’t reply, only turned another useless page, but Sylvain didn’t appear to notice her too-speedy practice and directed a dreamy smile her way. “I think she’s the one, Dor. I really do.”

It would be courteous of her, Dorothea knew, to inquire about the date he’d had, the one that had, apparently, ended in a relationship and not a heartbreak. But he _always_ said that when a girl said yes to commitment she didn’t know he didn’t actually mean. “You’re awfully certain for a playboy after _one_ date. Was she that good in bed?”

She pointedly did not look at his neatly-made bed while she spoke. It was always neatly-made, no matter how recently it had enjoyed more than one occupant. Sylvain could be particular like that.

If Sylvain heard any revulsion in her voice, he didn’t acknowledge it. No, he leaned into it: “We didn’t even _have_ sex. We went to tea, I asked her to be my girlfriend, and that was that. We just kept…talking and talking and nothing else. I didn’t even kiss her goodnight!”

“Maybe she’s terrible, then. You won’t know until you try it, Syl.”

Sylvain wasn’t even listening anymore. His words were more lyrical than the invisible praises to Saint Seiros on her sheet music. “Her voice…it’s silky as cream and just as sweet. Every sentence escaping her lips spins sugar through the air. I could listen to her dulcet tones forever and a day. Curves as—”

“—gentle as a breeze on a cloudy spring day, like Odette von Whatever? Or grabbable as the enormous breasts you wanted to suffocate in, like that Alliance lord’s daughter?”

Before the last syllable had left Dorothea’s mouth, she knew she’d crossed a line. Her jokes had not sounded like jokes. They hadn’t _been_ jokes. They sounded like jealous, ugly, cruel parting words before a breakup, sharp on her tongue like eating glass from a broken sorbet goblet.

And Sylvain had heard it just as sharply. As truthfully. As painfully. He didn’t have time to school his expression—why had Dorothea dared to look up?—from the blissful peace lifting his smile into this wide-eyed shock and…and hurt twisting his brows, and silent, parted lips.

Her accidental and acidic words’ burn had left him frozen.

“That…came out awful,” Dorothea said. She tucked a loose curl of hair behind her ear, hoping the casual and sensual gesture took the edge out of her forced giggles.

Sylvain didn’t even bother masking his own appalled laugh. “Yeah, you think?”

“Oh, you know, I…” Dorothea fumbled for an excuse as elegantly as she could and failed. “I had a long day.”

The words ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t even manage to leave her lungs. She didn’t try to form them.

“Yeah. Sure.”

Conversation died, more akin to a brutal battlefield slaughter than an unmarked grave. Dorothea tried not to clear her throat and dropped her eyes back to her music, away from Sylvain’s paralyzed smile, and hated how quickly the lyrics reappeared. Her hum brayed through the silence.

Sylvain got up from the rug they shared. The scrape of his desk chair on the bare wood echoed. The clink and slosh of him fiddling with his inkwell drained the last dregs of Dorothea’s muddy concentration, and she wondered why he didn’t tell her to leave.

Sylvain didn’t _ask_ people to leave. He told them to. He informed them they were now leaving, that he was out of their life and it was in their best interests to comply without a fuss. Sylvain left _them_.

Except they were in his room. Sylvain had nowhere to go. Dorothea was intruding, just as so many girls had before.

Dorothea left people, too. Dorothea left _this_ room all the time. Dorothea left _Sylvain_ more times than either of them bothered to count. Always in the morning, always the first to wake up, always the first to get dressed, always the first to leave.

Once, Sylvain had disrupted the pattern. Not now, not the way she’d disrupted it now, but a disruption all the same. She must have jostled him on her way out of bed. Perhaps her hair had tickled his cheek, or her bare thigh had brushed his half-hard cock. Whatever the reason, Sylvain had woken up, at least a little, still trapped in a dream about some other concept of happiness. Because there was no other excuse for the way his arms reached for her, the way his fingers trailed along her stomach, the way he mumbled with a sort of dreamlike desperation, “Please stay. Just this once.”

Dorothea had done the right thing and gotten dressed even faster as if she hadn’t heard. They’d both have been mortified if she’d listened to Sylvain’s not-real self, if he awoke to find her still there like a starstruck lover and not an affectionate friend. She’d never brought it up, and neither did he, because he’d been asleep.

“I need to go practice,” Dorothea said now. She shuffled her lyrics and music in her lap to grab his attention and earned a grunt of acknowledgement instead of a wave goodbye.

Of course someone else would always catch Sylvain’s eye.

 _You’re a catch, Dorothea, but no one deserves catching you_.

* * *

Life went on—why would it not? One spat, one mistake didn’t ruin a strong foundation of friendship.

“Dor, dodge!”

She dropped to the dusty training room floor in time with Sylvain’s warning. Felix swung, Felix missed, Dorothea disarmed him, and she grinned at his pout as she accepted the sword tournament grand prize. Sylvain, for his trouble, got an earful from Felix that he utterly ignored, winking at her while Felix complained about how it wasn’t fair for Sylvain to take advantage of how he’d strained himself training too much and _absolutely_ rigging what would have been his sweeping victory—

“What a great friend you are,” Dorothea commented when she realized he was standing in line behind her for dinner. She hadn’t even sensed his presence, of which she was already so _aware_.

Sylvain stretched his arms with enough drama and grace to land him a lead operatic role. He grinned, huge and dopey and ridiculous. Dorothea rolled her eyes. “Aren’t I?”

“Occasionally,” she granted him, and turned back to her dinner selection. She let him carry her tray to where she’d promised to sit with Ingrid. He sat on Ingrid’s other side.

Still friends.

Friends who no longer fucked, sure. Friends who didn’t spend as much time in each other’s rooms as before, sure, if at all. It was only appropriate. They never did when he was in a relationship. When it ended, which it always did, things went back to normal: they fucked a little, talked a lot, sat around wearing no constricting undergarments and doing nothing at all about it.

But this one didn’t end. And Sylvain didn’t talk about this new girlfriend like he used to do with all his other girls. Not with Dorothea, at least.

Dorothea was glad for that, at least. Not for any real reason. She just…wasn’t in the mood to talk about sex, hear about sex, have sex. She hadn’t been on any dates at all as of late, anyway. She’d been too busy. The Blue Lions Professor had taken an interest in her progress with a sword and leadership skills, and Dorothea was considering taking the woman up on her offer to switch classes. Petra had been training with her much more, also impressed by her rapid improvement, and was also talking of joining that class. “Black Eagles House will be much lonelier without my friend,” she’d said, and Dorothea’s heart had swelled.

Ingrid, while failing to hide her excitement at the possibility of Dorothea joining the Blue Lions, was oddly reticent when it came to Dorothea’s dating life, or lack thereof.

“I thought you’d be less worried for me now,” Dorothea tried to laugh when she herself brought it up. But even that didn’t tempt Ingrid into conversation.

“I’m always worried about you,” was all she’d said.

Well, fine, then. Dorothea had always hated worrying her friends. She preferred it when they didn’t care, and, since that chance shrunk with each passing day at Garreg Mach, she could at least prove they had no cause for concern.

Sure enough, Ingrid’s relief practically oozed out of her pores when Dorothea informed her she’d set up a date with a monk—a _monk_ , of all people—who led chapel services on Dorothea’s usual rehearsal days.

“I’m glad you’re moving on,” Ingrid said out of nowhere when Dorothea told her they’d planned to have tea in town that very weekend. But one lift of Dorothea’s eyebrow had her clapping her hands over her mouth.

“Oh, my dearest Ingrid,” Dorothea sighed. “For all your many other charms, subtlety is not one of them.”

Ingrid ignored Dorothea’s inviting pat on the pew and settled for wringing her hands. “I was just…I’m so happy my friends are still getting along.”

Now both of Dorothea’s eyebrows shot up. “Were we ever _not_?”

Well, Ingrid’s relationship with Felix and…her childhood friends had always seemed more antagonistic than not. Dorothea couldn’t claim to understand when the fights were real and when they were performative.

“No! No,” Ingrid jumped to say. “Just…you and…and, like I feared, you and…”

“Oh, you are just adorable!” Dorothea laughed. The echoes of her voice rang through the cathedral like church bells, and Ingrid’s shoulders relaxed enough Dorothea didn’t know how to request that Ingrid not tell Sylvain about her date, even though she never had before.

* * *

“Hey, Thea. Got a sec?”

Dorothea’s heart stuttered in time with the fluttering of her music sheets in the breeze. Sylvain stood behind the gazebo gate, hands stuffed into his pockets, a faint grin on his face. She closed her book. “Maybe,” she said as dismissively as she could. “But only if you have something interesting worth my time.”

The banter she’d waited for didn’t arrive. Sylvain scratched the back of his head and sighed, that odd little smirk still quirking his lips. “I don’t know. Maybe not? You weren’t really…interested before.”

Her pounding heart sank. With a shaking hand, she waved at the gate. “People change. Maybe I am interested this time.”

Morbid curiosity, after all, was still _interested_.

Sylvain skulked inside the gazebo and settled next to her, heaving a sigh. He sank back, staring at the whorls and grooves of the painted wooden beams. “So…I’m not dating that girl anymore,” he said, and glanced at her out of the corner of his dark brown eyes. “I ended it.”

Dorothea hated the sad droop of his mouth. She hated her relief to see it.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. She set the music book aside. Sylvain shook his head, and the breeze left the curls of his hair trembling long after he’d stilled.

“Don’t be. Should’ve known something was up the first time I kissed her.”

Dorothea didn’t know when that had been. She hadn’t wanted to.

Had Sylvain noticed?

Judging by the way the words rushed out of him like a confession, he probably had.

“She just started wanting to have sex _all_ the time after that. Every date was foreplay to her, even if I didn’t touch her. Sometimes she didn’t want to have a date at all, just came to my room or dragged me to hers and started shredding my shirt. Once, she showed up at some unholy hour without a top on. I don’t even know _how_ she managed to get there without anyone noticing; I don’t know if you know where her room is, but she’s on the first floor, too. I feel like I’m going to find a familiar nightgown stuffed into a greenhouse planter next time the Professor shoves me into weeding duty,” he added with a laugh as bitter as Hubert’s favorite coffee.

“Is…that a bad thing?” Dorothea asked him as gently as she could. “I don’t mean to dismiss it,” she hurried to add when something flickered in his expression, “but…Sylvain, I don’t know if you noticed, but you _do_ like having sex.” She forced a wobbly smile of her own onto her lips, matching his. “Excuse me, ‘making love.’”

“Fucking,” he said absentmindedly. “Yeah, I guess I do. But…” Sylvain exhaled another blustery sigh, leaned his head on the pole behind him, and finally, finally met her gaze. Embarrassment warred with disappointment warred with sadness on his face, like a confused battle of three unfamiliar ideologies. “She said something. Something weird about Gautier territory. Something I hadn’t ever told her.”

Dorothea waited and understood.

“And…” Sylvain swallowed, loud and visible, and Dorothea wanted to feel his throat against her neck while she hugged him. She kept her hands in her lap. “I called her on it, and she said yeah, she’d been doing…research. On _my_ territory. _Research_.” He spat out the word. “She only wanted one thing from me. Just like _everyone_ else. Just…all of them. All of them.”

Sylvain’s tear-streaked path of grieving ex-lovers didn’t always end at Ingrid, although Ingrid would be furious to learn it. Dorothea had comforted enough sobbing girls to know some of them really had loved him, that they’d merely said something or other that hit him too close to home, something Sylvain had trusted Dorothea never to reveal, and that Sylvain had gotten terrified and left them in heartbroken pieces. He’d labeled them all “just like the rest,” whether they were or they weren’t.

Dorothea understood all of them, Sylvain included. She knew what it was like to fear her body’s attractions to others. But…

She knew what it was like to love him.

Sylvain’s former lover, however? Well, she really had turned out creepy. And that was a shame, no matter her love or desires. Even if Sylvain hadn’t been her best friend.

“I’m so sorry, Syl,” Dorothea said, and meant the ‘sorry’ this time, meant it when it ended and she felt for him, like when she hadn’t meant it when it had begun and she fell for him.

Sylvain’s soft smile told her he remembered, too. “Are you, though?”

Dorothea rested her hand on—the bench, she placed it next to his on the bench, fingers not quite brushing. She fixed her eyes on him, silent and expectant, until he had no choice but to meet her gaze again.

“You deserve so much, Syl,” she told him. “No one will _ever_ deserve you, and you deserve it all. You’re a catch, too.”

This close, this intimate, Dorothea could watch his whole face change. Could watch his eyelashes flutter, flickering fast and fearful and framing wide brown eyes. Could see his face go pale, then pink, then fade back to a flush.

Still, he managed to quip, “Well, everyone really _is_ trying to catch me, aren’t they? Maybe I deserve that, too.” His hand inched closer despite his too-light teasing, and Dorothea let him catch her fingers, too, squeeze them tight like a promise. She wondered if he remembered when he’d told her she deserved it all, if he’d meant it then, if he thought she meant it now, if it had meant anything to him to hear it.

And the second the thought popped into her mind, Sylvain burst it with a seductive, wolfish smile, all fake charm and sharp teeth. “Practically _ensnared_ , Dor. All tied up and helpless.” His thumb stroked the back of her wrist, and she tugged her hand away. He let her go. “It’s okay if you want to console me, though. Maybe…tea in my room? Maybe on our free day?”

Despite his teasing and flirting and pain, Dorothea relaxed and permitted him to take her hand and play with her fingers again. It was…a truce, of some sort. An offer to return to normalcy. The desire to go back to friendship, to fall back on what they knew. To kiss and hold and read and relax, to spend time—

“Fuck!”

Sylvain recoiled like her out-of-character swear had slapped him harder than an ex might. “Uh—sorry, we don’t _have_ —”

“No, no, it’s—” Dorothea covered her face with her free hand, although Sylvain’s grip had grown limp. “I have a date.”

 _Fucking monk_.

Sylvain pulled away from her hand, and her skin felt cold. “Oh. Ha! Oh, okay, a _date_ , right. Well, you have fun in my name, okay? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” He got to his feet with an exaggerated huff, but Dorothea held out a hand to stop him.

“I won’t, well…” She swallowed. Sylvain waited for her to arrange her expression into a casual, friendly smile. “I won’t say no to tea with you anyway. If you have a little time now, that is.”

Sylvain, Dorothea knew, would say no. In his shoes, she’d do the same. For all he’d offered normalcy, a return to their old friendship, time moved forward, not back, and never repeated.

“I always have time for the monastery’s loveliest rose,” Sylvain said, and swept into an elaborate bow. His smile, when he perked back up to admire her shock, looked as real as ever when he said, “I’d never say no to spending time with you.”

Dorothea went to the cathedral that evening and canceled the date. She didn’t explain—not to the monk, not to Ingrid, and not to Sylvain.

She didn’t tell Sylvain at all. He didn’t need to know.

 _You’re a real catch, Sylvain. No one deserves you, you know_?

* * *

“I think I have feelings for Sylvain.”

Petra’s training sword rang loud and intimidating against the walls of the training grounds. Dorothea winced, feeling the other end of the weapon pressing hard against her own. “Were you not knowing this?”

“I—of course not! Why would I?” Dorothea parried, Petra knocked her away with ease, and Dorothea’s grip fumbled on the hilt. Petra waited for her to steady herself then continued her assault.

“We all see you talk,” Petra explained. “I was thinking you were flirting. Both of you. More than the usual Dorothea-and-Sylvain flirting.”

Petra was hardly out of breath. Dorothea surrendered.

“The Professor will be disappointed in us,” Petra sighed, lowering her sword.

“Oh, not at all,” Dorothea sighed right back. “Only with me. Just like the rest of you, I see.”

Petra pinched her brows together and rubbed soothing circles on Dorothea’s back so reminiscent of the way Dorothea gave her massages she couldn’t help but smile.

“We’re never being disappointed in you, Dorothea.” Her sympathetic expression brightened, and she raised her sword again with renewed excitement. “Oh! But ask the Professor to make Sylvain be training together with you! Then you will give disappointment—ah, disappoint her with your sword skills!”

Dorothea picked up her discarded sword in silence and replied by battering Petra’s opposing weapon to pieces.

* * *

“Did you know, too?”

“Of course,” Linhardt mumbled against her shoulder.

Dorothea knocked her shoulder against his, trying to shove him off, but his cheek seemed glued to her sleeve. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say!”

“Sure I do,” Lin yawned. He smacked his lips, sat up, and frowned. “You’re talking about how painfully obvious it was you’d fallen in love, or lust, or whatever with the Gautier heir.”

“His name’s Sylvain,” Dorothea snapped. Linhardt’s eyelids drooped, but she wouldn’t let him be bored to sleep by such a sensitive subject. “And you know he’d be furious if he heard you call him that.”

“Fortunately, I don’t care,” Lin announced through another yawn. He settled against the tree bark, apparently dismissing her as a potential napping and snuggling partner.

“Lin.” No response. “You care about _me_ , right?”

“You’re not Sylvain. You’re Dorothea.”

Something about that drowsiness-saturated sentence warmed Dorothea’s heart. She tucked her knees to her chest to protect it. “And I don’t have a Crest,” she reminded him.

“Always astute, our Dorothea.”

She waited, but Lin didn’t add any other fond, mocking statements.

“You like me anyway, though,” she said after a few more seconds of silent waiting, less of a question than she’d intended.

Linhardt didn’t reply. He’d fallen asleep again.

* * *

“You’re not angry with me, are you? With either of us?”

Ingrid’s head shot up from her novel so fast her freshly-braided hair slapped her in the face. “Oh, no,” she whispered through the blond wisps trapped against her mouth, “what did you and Sylvain do this time?”

Dorothea cackled. “Oh, my. It really was obvious to everyone but me, wasn’t it? No, we didn’t do anything,” she hastened to add as Ingrid’s steadily-whitening face grew blue with her held breath.

Ingrid’s relieved exhale freed her frowsy braid from her face. “Oh, thank the Goddess,” she said. She dropped her head back to her book and propped her chin on her hand. “I have enough to worry about with _him_. I’m so glad my high opinion of you hasn’t changed.”

“Your—” Dorothea gaped, unladylike as anything, but Ingrid didn’t spare her a second glance. “Even after…after knowing I…I have…I have _feelings_ for him? Your opinion of me hasn’t changed? Not at all?”

Ingrid raised a brow, but at the exciting adventures in her book, not directly at her. “Why would it?”

“Not even a little?”

Ingrid didn’t seem to find this conversation worth her emotional energy, but then again, Ingrid could be awfully unsympathetic when she didn’t understand someone else’s emotions. “You’re my best friend,” she reminded Dorothea with all the boredom of a teacher for some particularly dull child, “and so is he. Maybe it says awful things about my taste in friends for _you_ to be the most responsible, but for all the times you’ve protected me…you really don’t think I’d try to protect you if I thought I could?” She turned a page and smiled at some woodcut illustration of a long-dead knight. “I’m just glad you realized on your own. Thanks for sparing me the trouble.”

* * *

Attending Hanneman’s seminar was not exactly the way Dorothea had planned to spend her free day.

“My exam’s in a week,” Sylvain had reminded her when he’d literally gotten on his knees to beg her to join him. “I need my best professor there!”

Dorothea had refused to display any hint that his charm was working and had crossed her arms above him. “It’s _Professor_ Hanneman’s seminar. Or have you forgotten?”

“That’s exactly it!” Sylvain had taken both her hands in his, pleading eyes rendered almost convincing by the gesture. “He’s my _least_ favorite professor. You, Professor Arnault, have taught me everything I know.”

She’d struggled not to laugh, managing to ask one final, self-indulgent question: “I’m your favorite, but not your _best_ teacher, then?”

Sylvain kissed each one of her knuckles, quick little presses of his lips like birds pecking seeds from her hands, mouth brushing each one only to go back and do it all over. “My best! My favorite! My Dorothea! The only one I need and want!”

Well, who was she to turn him down? Her heart wasn’t pounding _so_ heart as to block her voice, at least.

Sylvain was focused, though. He followed Hanneman’s instructions as if he hadn’t practiced them over and over with Dorothea countless exhausting evenings and boring afternoons. He pretended to listen to their professor’s critique as if both he and Dorothea hadn’t calculated far more efficient formulas for the same powerful fire spell—

Heat blasted far too close to Dorothea’s cheek, and she jerked back on pure, experienced instinct.

“Shit! Dorothea!” Sylvain hurried over to check on her, as did Hanneman and the healer on duty and a handful of other students who’d noticed and wanted to gape. “Did I hit you?” Before Dorothea could push him away, he’d cupped her face in both hands, turning her this way and that with enough concerned gentleness that the tears stinging her eyes made him fear, with a panicked exclamation, that she really had been injured.

“I’m fine,” she said when the healer scurried up, looking a little _too_ excited to get to work healing her body. She batted Sylvain’s hands off her face. Sylvain whooshed a sigh of relief, bergamot from their teatime and cedar from her bedroom brushing against her. “Maybe you won’t pass that exam after all,” she sniffed.

The other students, bored with the lack of blood and burns, returned to their drills. Dorothea did, too, straightening her uniform.

Another fireball blasted past her and set her assigned training dummy alight.

“Oh, wow! Man, I’m so clumsy, Dor.”

Dorothea whirled around to find Sylvain clapping smoking hands over his mouth. His eyes danced too much in the firelight for her to take him even the least bit seriously.

“Really?” she sneered. “I can’t wait to see ‘clumsy’ written on your exam results, then.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder, unruffled and unbothered. With the only part of Sylvain’s face not covered being his burning eyes, heat shot to her stomach when she realized his gaze had raked the graceful curve of her bare neck.

Dorothea whirled around, hoping he couldn’t tell he’d set her face aflame, too.

Only five minutes later, another fireball, smaller and much farther from her, bounced past Sylvain’s training dummy and sizzled against the side of hers. Dorothea zapped the corner of his with lightning as payback.

“Fire spells, Miss Arnault! We’re practicing fire spells this seminar.”

“I’m so sorry, Professor Hanneman,” Dorothea gushed, sweet as burnt sugar.

A tiny flame flickered under her mannequin’s post as a helpful reminder.

Dorothea inspected her nails of one hand and shot a streak of fire at Sylvain’s mannequin without looking from the other.

“Ooh, _fancy_. You’ve got such great _restraint_ , don’t you? Such _discipline_ —”

Dorothea tossed her hair again—she felt rather than saw Sylvain’s stare this time—and stretched her arms far above her head. Was he looking at the way her blouse stretched over her breasts? Was he noticing them for the first time, like the way she noticed how yes, the belt really _did_ make his hips look slim, but that she also knew how it looked _off_ and liked it _both_ ways—

Her training dummy exploded, and now Sylvain’s frantic apologies returned to genuine fear, because “I really lost control for a second, it wasn’t intentional that time—uh, not that it was _before_ , Professor Ha—”

“Will you two stop _flirting_ for the half hour remaining of my seminar?” Hanneman seethed, fists balled like he wanted to sling a few spells of his own.

The tip of their oft-uttered, insistent sentence—‘We’re just kidding, Professor’—tasted cold and common on Dorothea’s tongue as she prepared herself to say it.

But Sylvain’s voice beat her to it.

No.

No, he _hadn’t_ said it first. No, he said—

“Sorry, Professor Hanneman. We’ll stop.”

And Dorothea said nothing at all.

The last, painful, exciting, terrible, heartbreaking half hour of Hanneman’s seminar almost made Dorothea wish she’d never come to the Officers Academy.

Sylvain was always kidding when he flirted with her. Dorothea was, too. Dorothea was special that way—they were never serious, they were always friends. Real flirting and fake apologies were for other girls. Hope and flattery were for everyone but her, everyone but him.

Sylvain had apologized this time. Dorothea wasn’t special anymore.

 _No one deserves you. You know that, right_?

No more teasing fireballs scorched the tiles by her feet for the rest of the lesson. Dorothea didn’t dare glance Sylvain’s way, didn’t dare hope she was special after all.

* * *

And finally, they were free.

Dorothea was the first to flee the magic training rooms. Usually, she was the last, staying to chat with Hanneman about some technique or another, or even chat about their lives in Enbarr. But Hanneman’s surly, curmudgeonly glare hadn’t faded by the time the bells rang. He did not appear particularly chatty.

And even if he had, Dorothea had plans. Important plans. Soothing plans. Plans like running home, stripping naked, dressing up in her fanciest lingerie and most curve-hugging dress she saved only for dates, painting her face in her newest, prettiest makeup palette, and singing her favorite new opera from start to finish without letting anyone through her door.

Comforting things.

Things she deserved.

“Dorothea!”

Dorothea quickened her pace, trying to put as much distance between the voice she loved the most and wanted to hear the least. It wasn’t too far from the training grounds to her room. Just one hop down the stairs, just straight ahead—

“Thea, wait! I want to apologize.”

And pain stopped her straight in her tracks. Sylvain, finally catching up to her, bent over, hands on his upper thighs, making a great show of acting like he was out of breath. Dorothea took advantage of his dramatics to dismiss him as quickly as possible.

“You’ve nothing to apologize for,” she said. “At least, not this time.” She winked at him while he caught his breath—maybe he _had_ hurried after helping put the scorched mannequins away—and recommenced her casual flight, explaining, “Terribly sorry, but I have to—”

“No, seriously, it _really_ was an accident,” Sylvain interrupted, not getting the hint. Dorothea sighed and stayed put. “I mean, the first one was. The rest I kind of…I’m glad I didn’t hurt you, that’s all. I’d never forgive myself if I had. Not that I don’t think you’re capable or tough or—I need to pay more attention to you, that’s all! That—on the battlefield, or in training, just…where you are. In general!”

Dorothea had never seen Sylvain flustered before. He waved his hands after every other word, his blinks speeding up with his speech, a gradual flush creeping up his jaw to the tops of his high cheekbones. It made for quite the impressive sight, and she almost wanted to savor it was she not terrified she sported a blush of her own at the praise.

“I’ll forgive you,” her mouth supplied out of habit. Sylvain shut up, sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. When he rumpled his wavy curls like that, they never bounced back frizzy and haphazard like hers. He always said she had flawless hair, but then again, he’d never seen it in the morning, unbrushed, untamed, and free of product. And he probably never would.

“Okay. Okay, good. Um…” Sylvain flicked an invisible speck of lint off his shoulder. Dorothea cast her eyes about the space, searching for some hidden group of gawking, admiring girls, but it was just the two of them by the dorms.

“Do you need something?” she asked when Sylvain continued to fidget.

“Yeah, uh…So that seminar was a waste of time, right?” He laughed, then closed his mouth over the sound like he could bite it back. “I mean, thanks for coming with. Made it fun. But…You’re right. I really _am_ gonna fail the exam next month. And…uh, maybe we can spend more time on it together? Right now? You know, teaching, and hanging out, and, it’s fine if not, if you have plans, like, a date, I get it—”

Dorothea stared his rambles into silence. Sylvain’s request would interfere with her plans for the evening, and she was tempted to tell him so. He’d offered her an easy out, after all, suggesting maybe she’d already had plans, that he had no expectations, that…

“Did you mean that apology?” she blurted out instead.

Dorothea wondered if Sylvain’s red face burned to the touch. “Seriously? _Seriously_? I’d hate myself forever if I lost you; of _course_ I meant it—”

His mortified, fearful words made courage blossom in Dorothea’s lonely, hopeful heart. “No, I know _that_ , Syl. Really? Really?” When he scratched the back of his head, mumbling agreement with a bashful smile, she steeled herself and asked, “Did you mean your apology to Professor Hanneman? Were you…flirting with me?”

The last, painful, exciting, terrible, heart-pounding seconds of Sylvain’s silence made Dorothea wonder if coming to the Officers Academy was the best or the worst thing to ever happen to her. That terrible, terrifying tension between knowledge and dreams, between long-awaited closure and a door closed forever.

“Uh. That’s a loaded question.” Sylvain’s forced smile looked more like a terrified cringe. “Am I going to screw up everything if I say yes?”

Dorothea shook her head. Once. Sylvain walked one footstep closer.

“What if I say I really meant that apology, too? That gonna make things weird?”

She shook her head twice. Sylvain walked two steps closer. His smile, real and lovely and relieved in wondering, glowed in the fiery sunset.

“What if I say I meant every single stupid pick-up line I’ve tried on you and I kind of want to try more? Can I apologize for that?”

She shook her head three times. “Don’t you _dare_ ,” she snarled, Sylvain walked three steps closer, wrapped his arms around her, and pressed his lips against hers, four five six seven times, squeezed her tight, eight nine ten, one slow, sweet, languorous kiss teasing her lips apart again and again, one silent promise after another.

When they let each other breathe, they still had nothing to say. Nothing to do but trace the sharp curve of his jaw, to feel his thumbs caress her cheeks, to see the stupid grin on his face and know she was the one to bruise it into place with her mouth, too.

“Actually, you _could_ apologize for almost burning my hair,” Dorothea said when the moment lasted too long and too new. “That’s worth an apology or two, wouldn’t you say?”

Sylvain wheezed a laugh and nosed the silky spot that had so nearly been lost to fire, like he’d paid attention to her body and being the entire afternoon. Dorothea closed her eyes and drew meaningless patterns on his chest as if she’d never felt it before.

“I humbly apologize to the best and most beautiful locks to ever grace a woman’s head,” he whispered, and the rumble of his voice in her ear made Dorothea shiver so hard he had to have felt it. Sylvain dropped his arms lower, wrapping them around her waist in a hug more loving than seductive.

“They forgive you, too,” Dorothea said with as much poise as she could muster.

“Heh.”

Another stupidly long silence. Sylvain cleared his throat sooner this time, like not talking scared him, too. “Told you, Dor.”

Dorothea tried to pull back to give him a puzzled glance, but he kept her trapped tight against his chest, refusing to look at her. “Told me what?” she murmured into his neck instead, and she felt him shudder, too.

“Thanks for letting me catch you.”

Dorothea gasped, and Sylvain backpedaled, loosening his grip to swing her into a dip like a ballroom dance. He swung her back up before she could formulate any sort of response and said far too seriously, “Maybe all I’m good for is holding you, though.”

Sylvain’s instantly-crimson face did indeed burn when she touched it. Dorothea pressed a messy kiss against his lips, one more thing so new and so familiar, and whispered against his mouth, “I liked the old one better.”

Sylvain buried his face in her neck and groaned. “I changed my mind. This is a terrible idea. I have _no_ idea what to do if I actually like someone I love. Hell, I wish I _wanted_ to change my mind. But Four fucking Saints, I’m way too relieved. I’m so angry nearly _burning_ you to death was what got me to stop being a coward.”

He wouldn’t feel her tears spill over if she just let him hide against her jaw, if she didn’t hold him close, too.

Dorothea wrapped her arms around his back, pressed her face into his chest, right where he always left the thing stupidly, stubbornly, seductively unbuttoned, and dried her tears on his skin. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she said, and when Sylvain’s rigid posture didn’t loosen, and when her guilt didn’t lessen, she forced herself to say, “I love that I like you, too. I love you too, Sylvain.”

“If I say I love you back, you’re not gonna believe me.”

“Try me.”

“I love you, Dorothea.”

And oh, even though the words sent…sent _something_ coursing through her… “Come on, Syl. We can be brave.”

Sylvain took a deep breath, pushed himself off her shoulder, pushed her away, and rested his hands on her shoulders. Another deep breath, and he looked her straight in the eyes. Dorothea found herself the one struggling to meet the intensity in his face, to not turn away. “I love you, Dorothea. I really, really like you, and I love you so much.”

“Thank you,” Dorothea croaked stupidly. She shook herself, but Sylvain didn’t let go even as he laughed. “I—be quiet, stop.”

“Okay, okay. Your turn. I mean, unless—” Sylvain started to let go, but Dorothea clamped her hands down on his fingers.

“I like you, Sylvain. Sylvain, I love you.”

Sylvain smashed another ungraceful kiss on her mouth and pulled away just as she strained to meet him. “I’ve loved you for so _crazy_ long,” he said, like a curse, like an oath, like a promise, “and I definitely don’t deserve you.”

Dorothea dragged him back down to taste his curses and promises from the source and wondered how she’d never noticed them before. “Well, I don’t deserve you, either,” she told him. “Didn’t we tell each other that no one will ever deserve us?”

Sylvain brushed her bottom lip with his thumb and stared at it like he’d never felt its kisses anywhere before, like he’d never wanted it anywhere so much. “Well, I guess you were right about it being a bad line,” he said. “Can I try another one?”

“Let me try first,” Dorothea said. She took his hand from her mouth and pressed a single, almost innocent kiss against the tip of his thumb. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain said in a rough voice. He pressed his forehead against hers and Dorothea wanted him to keep talking, wanted to shut him up with a kiss. “Yeah, that works on me pretty well, coming from you. Because I love you too.” Sylvain opened his eyes, eyelashes blinking against hers, but Dorothea believed she still saw his smile. “I love you. You know that.”

“Way better,” Dorothea agreed. “Worked like a charm.”

She caught his lips in her own again. It tasted like bergamot and cinders.


End file.
